By Cho @Adobe Stock
Joyu Wang of The Wall Street Journal reports that there was a five-year wait for 38 Abrams tanks, highlighting pressures on U.S. industrial capacity amid growing concerns over China. Wang writes:
Taiwan hailed the arrival of its first state-of-the-art American tanks this week, celebrating what it described as “the world’s greatest war machine.”
Less prominently mentioned was the long wait that preceded the arrival of the 38 Abrams tanks: Taiwan placed the order five years ago, in June 2019, during President-elect Donald Trump’s first term.
According to the original plan, the Taiwanese military was to receive its first batch of cutting-edge M1A2 Abrams tanks in 2022, replacing the Vietnam War-era Patton tanks that Taiwan’s army has relied on for decades.
But the U.S. missed that timeline by two years as the Covid-19 pandemic and new wars in Ukraine and the Middle East strained the U.S. defense industry. […]
More recently, the departing Biden administration last month approved the sale of $320 million worth of spare parts and advanced radars for F-16 jets to Taiwan.
The U.S. should “stop arming Taiwan and stop encouraging or supporting ‘Taiwan independence’ forces trying to achieve their goals through military means,” Lin Jian, a spokesman for China’s Foreign Ministry, said Monday at a press briefing.
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